… my view of where technology innovation will lead us

Month

September 2016

The first email I ever received was a letter from outer space. My father sent it from Israel, probably in 1987; someone else had to print it out and deliver it to my mother. But it was special because it came from outer space. The message itself was an update on his trip with a paragraph devoted to explaining the new technology. I remembered wondering if I’d ever get another email.

Nearly three decades later, I find myself wondering again if the email I just received will be my last…

Tesla Motors says the Autopilot system for its Model S sedan “relieves drivers of the most tedious and potentially dangerous aspects of road travel.” The second part of that promise was put in doubt by the fatal crash of a Model S earlier this year, when its Autopilot system failed to recognize a tractor-trailer turning in front of the vehicle. Tesla says the driver, Joshua Brown, also failed to notice the trailer in time to prevent a collision. The result? In Tesla’s own words, “the brake was not applied”—and the car plowed under the trailer at full speed, killing Brown…

With blockchain still in its infancy, the race for domination is still a long way from being resolved. Evidence is there, however, that it is kicking off in a big way. Venture Capital firms pumped a record amount of investment into Bitcoin and blockchain-related startups last year at nearly $1 billion, and we have seen signs that major IT corporations, particularly IBM, and Microsoft, are making a long-term commitment to the support of blockchain development.

Microsoft, for one, has recently teamed up with Bank of America Merrill Lynch to try and make trade finance transactions faster, cheaper, safer, and more transparent using a blockchain-based framework. They also recently launched Project Bletchley, the Ethereum-based consortium blockchain technology they announced in June…

Ray Kurzweil is a futurist, a director of engineering at Google and a co-founder of the Singularity University think tank at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. He is a nonfiction author and creator of several inventions.

Over the past few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been the white-hot center of a flurry of activity. Startups that create embedded sensors for physical things have been snapped up by larger companies at a rapid pace, with deals for IoT startups totaling more than $30 billion in the past four years.

The IoT may well be The Next Big Thing, but maybe the attention around sensors is misplaced…

I remember when I first fell in love with cars. It started small with Hot Wheels when I was three and Micromachines when I was six. Everything about them was fast and exciting — even the commercials were narrated by the World’s Fastest Talker. I loved them.

Then, when I turned 12, my dad and I began taking annual trips to see the real thing at the New York International Auto Show. I looked forward to going every year, because even at that young age, I felt a connection to cars and the freedom they represented…

Following the accidental explosion at SpaceX on Sept. 1, company founder Elon Musk has been relatively quiet. But an interview posted this week gives us more insight into his thoughts on one of his favorite topics: artificial intelligence.

Speaking with Y Combinator president Sam Altman, Musk addressed a number of topics while seated in front of the assembly line of his other forward-looking company, Tesla.

And while he’s become known in recent years for being outspoken on the dangers of AI and, to some, painting science fiction-level scenarios that may not be viable for some time, in this talk he offers a different scenario regarding the Singularity.

“I don’t think the future of VR looks like video games; I don’t think it looks like cinematic VR; I think it looks like stories from our real lives.

It’s the most amazing afternoon you’ve ever had. For one person, it might be what we call a rom-com, for another it might be an action movie. For another, it might be something we don’t have a movie genre preexisting for. It might be just exploring.”

VR Pioneer Chris Milk: Virtual Reality Will Mirror Life Like Nothing Else BeforeChris Milk, founder and CEO of virtual reality company Within (formerly Vrse), has a vision for the future of stories. He was kind enough to take some time at Singularity University Global Summit to sit down and walk me through a wide-ranging conversation touching upon the future of storytelling as a medium, virtual reality as a platform for innovation and the wildly exciting interactions between virtual reality and other exponential technologies…

Among the hottest trends in technology these days are virtual reality, or VR, and its cousin, augmented reality, or AR. VR devices like the Oculus Rift give wearers the illusion of being in an entirely digital universe, whereas AR gadgets like Microsoft’s HoloLens overlay computer graphics on the wearer’s physical environment.

The latest development in this exciting space is the acceleration of “virtual personal computing,” in which the entire PC experience is based around VR or AR. Instead of interacting with a computer or smartphone via a mouse, keyboard or touch inputs, virtual personal computing calls for doing so with your voice, hand gestures or a digital keyboard you might only see while wearing special goggles…